Armor of the Gods
by HrinTiyr
Summary: Come away, oh Aesir child/ To the waters and the wild/ With a Trickster hand in hand/ For the world's more full of weeping/ Than you can understand. ON HOLD
1. Prologue

Prologue

From his vantage point high in the tower, it was obvious that Asgard was in turmoil. Heimdall had warned them, but his warning had, of course, come too late. For although Heimdall could see all the happenings of all the realms, he could only see the present, not the past or future, and Loki had been quick. And, quick as quicksilver, he had escaped.

Loki allowed himself a slight smile. This time, finally, all had gone as planned, and one of Thor's most beloved treasures was now in Loki's possession. The treasure itself meant nothing to him, but he imagined that its loss must be quite agonizing for Thor. That was good enough for now.

Below his tower-top lookout, Loki could see mounted guards combing the streets and structures of Asgard in a strategic search pattern. It was insulting that they should think him so easy to catch. Granted, he would have to leave soon; it wouldn't do to be thwarted when he'd come so far. Still, he had a little time.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Loki inquired of the 'treasure' in his arms. The infant turned its baby-blue eyes to him, though it was too young to understand. Well, that would come with time, as would the fruition of the rest of his plan. The child looked back out over the city, putting its little fingers in its mouth. Loki deftly repositioned the erring hand and wiped the fingers clean on the child's blanket. The child appeared not to notice.

A metallic clang resonated up the tower, followed by the swift clatter of armored boots. By the time the guards reached the top chamber, it was empty. Loki had moved on.


	2. Endings

Chapter 1: Endings

Puente Antiguo, New Mexico, U.S.A.

2021 C.E., 11 years after the _Asgard Incident_ (id est, the movie)

Phillip Coulson knew, he just _knew_, that the official story would be of a training exercise gone wrong. Of course, people would know it was a cover story for _something_; they always did. It wasn't his job to lie convincingly; it was his job to make sure no one found out what the cover story was covering.

A warm liquid flowed over his right hand, and suddenly he also knew that it wouldn't be his job for much longer. Lying splayed on his back where he'd fallen, Phillip tried to breathe. An unpleasant bubbling sensation came from what had once been a perfectly functional human neck. _His_ neck. Another warm wave flowed over his hand.

He didn't want to die.

He saw blue light above him, then a flash. A face, beautiful and young, sunlight glistening on pretty hair. _Angels_, he thought, _they do exist. _It didn't seem silly; there were superheroes and Scandinavian gods, after all—why shouldn't there be angels? The pretty hair flashed again, and something was pressed against his ruined throat. The beautiful face came back, and it said something. _Not an angel_, Phillip thought, feeling suddenly foolish. _No angels in Asgard—it's a valkyrie. _Then it disappeared.

* * *

It wouldn't have been as bad, Alice thought, if there had been sirens. Screaming sirens, or at least a blaring alarm, would have made it a little more tolerable. Screaming sirens mean that at least the sirens are still working. Screaming sirens mean that someone is coming to help you. Screaming sirens make it harder to hear the screaming people.

The people who weren't dead were screaming, the people who weren't dying were screaming, and some of the people who were dying were screaming, too.

Not this one. Even if he was lucky enough to survive this, Alice knew that the poor man would probably never speak again. Regardless, she pressed her folded jacket against his neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding. The man's eyes rolled back, showing only white. Alice felt herself starting to panic. She didn't know what to do!

Kneeling in the dirt with a dying man's blood on her hands, Alice heard

_Bodies lying all around, blood bathing them in red,_

_Their white eyes staring at the sun, these, the countless dead._

Where had she heard that poem before?

Somewhere, a siren screamed.

* * *

Dust and sand hung thick in the air, thrown up by the explosion's shockwave. The medical teams, those that didn't need medical attention themselves, were giving out breathing masks as well as bandages. Holding her own mask to her face with her uninjured arm, Dr. Jane Foster tried to think of what had gone wrong. What had caused the explosion? Every computation, every equation, every circuit, strut, bolt, weld and wire had been double-checked by at least four different experts of the field. How could this have happened?

Jane stood alone in the blast zone, medics and techs and survivors rushing around her, but she barely saw them. She felt stunned and numb, and sad. She had failed. She had worked on this project for eleven years, failure after failure, but never like this. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s five previous attempts to create an Einstein-Rosen bridge had either sputtered out due to insufficient power, or someone had reached the fail-safes in time to prevent catastrophe.

Jane smelled hot metal, burned earth and another scent that she thought was blood. Catastrophe had caught them this time.

A gurney surrounded by field medics wheeled toward her, and Jane sidestepped out of its way. As it passed, she recognized its occupant as Agent Coulson.

Something lightly touched Jane's arm. Turning, she found it was the hand of a little girl. She appeared to speak, but Jane heard no words. She stared at girl uncomprehendingly for a moment. The girl cocked her head to the side, looking confused, and Jane noticed that she wore no mask. The girl, who couldn't yet be in her teens, Jane thought, pulled Jane closer and spoke again. It sounded like, _Are you alright?_ Jane suddenly realized that the explosion had probably deafened her, and the girl was yelling. Letting her mask drop, Jane nodded to indicate that she was. The girl gave her a skeptical look, then took Jane by her elbow and began leading her off through the debris. Something clicked in Jane's brain then, and she grabbed the child's arm and swung her around to face her.

"What are you doing here?" Jane half-yelled, though she could barely hear her own voice. The girl winced slightly at the noise. If the girl could still hear normally, then she hadn't been nearby for the explosion, Jane reasoned. But then, where had she come from? Jane was pretty sure that S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't allow civilian children free run of its facilities. The mysterious child tugged her arm free from Jane's grasp and gestured to the destruction around them.

"Trying to help you," she yelled back, her voice high and faint. Jane's eyes had followed the gesture, and she noticed with slight revulsion that the girl's fair hands were covered in blood. Looking closer, Jane noticed red spatters and smears on the child's shirt and pants as well, though she herself didn't seem to be hurt. Mystery Girl, as Jane had come to think of her, reclaimed Jane's elbow and started pulling her along again, seeming to know exactly where she was going. She did.

Jane had been looking at her feet to make sure she wouldn't trip on stray detritus when she was turned around and urged to sit down. Mystery Girl had led her to one of the emergency vehicles and sat her down on a concrete block. Jane felt as though her brain were in a fog, and wondered vaguely if she was in shock. Mystery Girl reappeared with a plastic water bottle, twisted the cap off, and offered it to Jane. With shaking hands, Jane took it carefully and drank until her lungs protested the lack of air. Setting the bottle aside and breathing deep, her mind began to clear. It was a nice feeling.

Mystery Girl sat down beside her and ran her fingers through her desert dirt-brown hair, resulting in a small dust cloud. Her real hair color was anyone's guess.

"What's your name?" Jane asked, remembering to keep her voice low. Mystery Girl picked up the water bottle and drained the other half before looking back at Jane.

"Alice Frost," she replied and held out her right hand.

Blood and dirt be damned, Jane gripped the girl's hand and shook it. Looking at Mystery Girl's—Alice's—face, Jane saw the most haunting crystal-blue eyes she'd ever seen.

It struck Jane forcefully then, that her experiment had failed; that, after this tragedy, S.H.I.E.L.D. would end the program; that she wouldn't be able to try again.

That she would never again see Thor.

* * *

**Credit for the poetry goes to Heather Alexander. **


	3. Miracle

**I know it's been long since last update, and I know this one's short and kind of dull. Sorry. This wretched plot bunny has been fighting me tooth and nail (and bunnies **_**do**_** have teeth—I have a scar from a rabbit bite). Please don't give up on me yet.**

"_Good evening. I'm Al Skinner and you're watching FNC News. Yesterday, a mysterious explosion devastated a small meteorological facility in western New Mexico. The explosion was reportedly caused by a malfunction of equipment. For more information, we go to Destini Gault, on location in Puente Antiguo, New Mexico. Destini?"_

_ "Thanks, Al. I'm here in Puente Antiguo, only fifty miles from where the explosion took place. With me is James Rhodes, retired Air Force general and now a consultant at the facility. Mr Rhodes, what caused this terrible accident?"_

_ "Well, Ms Gault, an investigation is underway and we're not certain yet, but it seems that an operation malfunction of new equipment—"_

_ "What kind of equipment, specifically?"_

_ "We believe it was a low-altitude rocket designed to study lightning."_

_ "A _rocket_? Is that safe so close to a town?"_

_ "It's not like a space rocket, nothing like that. It's more like a firework you see on the Fourth of July; it only goes as high as the clouds."_

_ "Except fireworks are _supposed _to explode, Mr Rhodes."_

_ "…An…unfortunate choice of words on my part."_

"_How many people were killed or injured?"_

_ "We're not prepared to release figures at this time, but I would like to express our sympathies to the families of all those who were affected by this tragedy, and to assure you that we are doing our absolute best to resolve it."_

_ "Thank you, Mr Rhodes. Back to you, Al."_

_ "Thanks, Destini. We'll have more on that story as information is released._

_Also on a sad note, Precious Metals, the thirteenth horse to win the Triple Crown, was humanely euth-"_

Jane hit the "off" button just a second too late. Her life's orchestra had played more than enough sad notes lately. She wasn't a racing fan, but still, she really didn't need to know that another innocent creature had died.

The office door alarm chimed behind her, and Jane swiveled her chair around and discarded the remote control before calling to her visitor to enter. The metal door opened to reveal Pepper Potts.

Jane admired Pepper. In some ways, Jane slightly envied Pepper. Pepper Potts was the kind of woman who _could not_ be fazed, or at least could not be made to show it. Admittedly, she had probably built up a resistance to fazing over her years of working for Tony Stark (whom Jane absolutely _could not_ abide), but it was still an impressive talent.

Without a word, Pepper heeled the door closed and crossed to Jane's desk, set her suitcase down on the floor, and started pushing cluttered notepads and reports into neat piles. Equal parts confused at Pepper's behavior and chagrined at her own messy habits, Jane jumped up to help. Once a sufficient space had been cleared, Pepper lifted what Jane had mistaken as a metal suitcase onto the table. Pepper pushed a button on the not-suitcase, and Jane couldn't hold back a laugh as it broke apart and expanded, revealing a makeshift mini bar.

All right, so maybe Stark's mechanical genius had _some_ uses. Pepper smirked back and plunked two glasses on the desk.

"I'm not allowed alcohol for another eight hours, you know," Jane pointed out, holding up her bandaged left hand as proof of doctor's orders. She wasn't actually hurt that badly, but she guessed the no-booze order had more to do with the drugs the medics had given her than her actual injuries.

Pepper nodded knowingly, but started unpacking the mini-bar anyway. Another quality Jane envied: Pepper always seemed to _know_ everything about everything. How she kept track of so much information was a mystery to the astrophysicist.

With the full set of bottles, boxes, mixes, mixers, and cups arrayed on Jane's desk, Pepper pulled up a chair for herself and sat, back straight and legs primly folded. "I believe Tony referred to this," she gave the now empty metal case a pat, "as the 'geek version Barcase'," Pepper said, then gestured to the displayed contents. "Teas, coffees, cocoas, and energy drinks. What would you like?"

Jane couldn't hold back another laugh as she plopped back into her chair and shook her head at the other woman's ingenuity. "Cocoa, definitely." Puente Antiguo was cold in November.

Pepper smiled and went to work, nimble hands flicking from end to end of the makeshift assembly line. Jane considered helping, but her bandaged hand would just get in the way. That and her unfamiliarity with the 'Barcase'; Pepper seemed to know exactly what she was doing. Then it clicked.

"They cut the program," Jane murmured. It wasn't a question. No one had said anything regarding the future of the Einstein-Rosen-Foster Project, and now she knew why: it _had_ no future. Realistically, she had already figured that out, but she'd still been hoping…

With a quiet sigh of affirmation, Pepper slid a steaming mug and a little box of tiny marshmallows across the desk. Jane decided to pass on the marshmallows; sometimes chocolate comfort had to be pure. Taking a careful sip of the hot liquid, Jane quickly corrected herself. "What's in this?" she asked in amazement.

Pepper took a sip of her own drink before answering. "Cinnamon, peppermint, milk, and the highest quality chocolate. How is it?"

"Um, a liquid miracle?" Jane tried. She sipped again and decided that Liquid Miracle should be the drink's official name. To heck with admiration or envy—at that moment, Jane loved Pepper Potts. She took another drink and leaned her head back, allowing her eyes to close. She'd owe Pepper big for this. Bad news would always be bad news, but a friend, a favor, and a Liquid Miracle could make it a bit more bearable.

Such a shame that miracles were restricted to beverages.

Turning the warm mug between her hands, Jane Foster stared into the rich brown of the drink, watching little glints and ripples form and vanish. There then gone, just like her project, just like Erik, just like Precious Metals, just like all the agents and engineers who'd died yesterday…just like Thor.

"Pepper?" Jane asked without moving, still staring at the warm flickers. "Do you know a good toast for …for, despair or something? Lamentation, maybe?" The mug rolled, back and forth, between her hands. Glints and ripples knotted and blinked. Finally, she saw Pepper move, out of the corner of her eye. Jane blinked the moisture from her eyes before looking up. Pepper held her own mug aloft.

"_To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists."_ Though quiet, there was a quality to Pepper's voice that Jane had never heard before. Jane reached forward to touch her cup to Pepper's.

The base alarm system screeched and flashed. Red emergency lights pulsed from within the walls and floor. Both women shot to their feet and out the door, abandoning the luxurious beverages and uncompleted toast. The base's metal and concrete hallways teemed with people rushing back and forth, eerie in the pulsing red light. Jane and Pepper had to weave their way through towards Command and Control. Jane swiped her ID badge, and the door swished open to admit them. C&C was a large, windowless chamber filled with screens, consoles, and somewhat-panicked people. Jane pushed her way to the center console table with Pepper right behind her. Fury, Barton, and Stark made room for the two as they reached the table, though they didn't look up from the screen display.

Jane gasped when she saw what it showed.


End file.
